Environmental Burden of United States Data Centers in the Artificial Intelligence Era
2024/11/14 by Gianluca Guidi, Francesca Dominici, Guidi, Gianluca +11 · 5 voices · 4 citations
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paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.09786
Abstract
The rapid proliferation of data centers in the US - driven partly by the adoption of artificial intelligence - has set off alarm bells about the industry's environmental impact. We compiled detailed information on 2,132 US data centers operating between September 2023 and August 2024 and determined their electricity consumption, electricity sources, and attributable CO2e emissions. Our findings reveal that data centers accounted for more than 4% of total US electricity consumption - with 56% derived from fossil fuels - generating more than 105 million tons of CO2e (2.18% of US emissions in 2023). Data centers' carbon intensity - the amount of CO2e emitted per unit of electricity consumed - exceeded the US average by 48%. Our data pipeline and visualization tools can be used to assess current and future environmental impacts of data centers.
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Discussions
- Reading: new study of 2,132 US data centers from 2023-24. They now account for more than 4% of total US electricity consumption, with 56% coming from fossil fuels. Virginia, Texas, and Oregon had the [bsky, 24 points, 2 comments]
- The lack of transparency on data center electricity was the single biggest hurdle when we produced a recent preprint in this topic:
arxiv.org/abs/2411.09786
Using a bottom-up approach, we estimate [bsky, 15 points, 0 comments]
- i mean, they are heavy polluters. let’s be real arxiv.org/pdf/2411.09786 [bsky, 10 points, 1 comments]
- From Soaring Energy Prices to Climate Threat to AI Bubble, Experts Warn Against Data Center Buildout [lemmy, 2 points, 1 comments]
- Data Centers Kill: "...alarm bells about the industry’s environmental impact...One sentence summary: US data centers produced 105 million tons CO2e in the past year with a carbon intensity 48% higher [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
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